ENS-Auctioned Ether Moved by Whale; Worth $74M

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An Ethereum “whale” has reclaimed 39,712 ETH, equivalent to $119 million, from the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) auction. The funds, associated with the domain “darkmarket.eth,” were locked in the ENS auction and remained unclaimed for over two years and seven months.

On-chain analytics firm Lookonchain announced that darkmarket.eth’s 63,734 ETH were transferred to a different wallet on July 31.

After 2.7 years of dormancy, darkmarket.eth reclaimed 39,712 $ETH ($74.17M) locked in the ENS auction just now.

And transferred 63,734 $ETH($119M) out to a new wallet.https://t.co/OtXYRpcOhn

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) July 31, 2023

The Ethereum Name Service translates human-readable names into addresses used on the Ethereum blockchain, giving users a pseudonym on the network. For two years, it had been holding the funds from its first deposits.

ENS founder and lead developer Nick Johnson publicly reminded the owner to reclaim the ETH back in 2021 but to no avail.

Johnson also highlighted that there are over 100,000 unclaimed deeds in ENS worth tens of thousands in ETH, urging users to check their addresses and claim their funds.

Check your own addresses at https://t.co/d2bnAdgx4w. There's still over 100k deeds unclaimed, holding tens of thousands of ETH. https://t.co/1LpsJt5CnX

— nick.eth (@nicksdjohnson) July 31, 2023

Meanwhile, other dormant wallet activities have been observed this month.

A wallet containing pre-mined Ether worth $116 million transferred its funds to a Kraken exchange address on July 19. Another dormant wallet moved over $30 million in Bitcoin, having acquired the assets when Bitcoin was worth only $4.92 on July 24:

💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 💤 A dormant pre-mine address containing 61,216 #ETH (116,396,127 USD) has just been activated after 8.0 years!https://t.co/f79T0fYa7b

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) July 18, 2023

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